For years, insurance distribution remained largely unchanged – relying primarily on independently affiliated agents and brokers. The process of selling to and servicing insurance customers was for the most part based on “high-touch” customer encounters. These interactions consumed a lot of time and energy – requiring agents to educate and assist customers with their research and subsequent purc...

Why do people purchase health insurance? Many economists would answer that it permits purchasers to avoid risk of financial loss. This note suggests that health insurance is also demanded because it represents a mechanism for gaining access to health care that would otherwise be unaffordable. For example, although a US$300,000 procedure is unaffordable to a person with US$50,000 in net worth, a...

background health insurance has been acknowledged by researchers as a valuable tool in health financing. in spite of its significance, a subscription paralysis has been observed in india for this product. people who can afford health insurance are also found to be either ignorant or aversive towards it. this study is designed to investigate into the socio-economic factors, individuals’ health i...

Does conducting a one-time household survey change the later behavior of those surveyed? Results from a two-stage field experiment on the purchase of hospitalization insurance in the Philippines suggest that it does. We started with a sample frame of clients from a large rural bank in the Philippines, and randomly selected individuals to either be surveyed or not surveyed by a local university ...

In this new scheme, entities may purchase individual insurance policies on separate medical products and services. We will explore how this may be implemented in clinical scenarios. Also, we will explore how this scheme may promote favorable clinical and economic outcomes. With this proposed scheme, instead of one insurance policy, an individual could select single policies on only those produc...

We provide an experimental analysis of competitive insurance markets with adverse selection. Our parameterized version of the lemons’ model (Akerlof 1970) in the insurance context predicts total crowding out of low-risks when insurers offer a single full insurance contract. The therapy proposed by Rothschild and Stiglitz (1976) to solve this major inefficiency consists of adding a partial insur...

The US and numerous developing countries do not provide universal health insurance coverage to their populations. Academic approaches to health insurance have typically adopted a neo-classical economic perspective, assuming that individuals make rational decisions to maximize their preferred outcomes, and businesses (including insurance companies) make rational decisions to maximize profits. In...

A cornerstone of health care reform is the establishment of state-level insurance exchanges where individuals and small businesses can purchase health insurance in an online marketplace. States are required to develop an exchange by 2014, or participate in a federal one. The exchanges will help people without employer-sponsored insurance find and choose a health plan to meet their needs. This I...